


Decay

by Deannie



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <i>Takes place after "Hot Zone"</i>
</p>
    </blockquote>





	Decay

**Author's Note:**

> _Takes place after "Hot Zone"_

Rodney McKay was incredibly drunk. 

"...I mean honestly--how hard would it be..." 

Well, it was incredible if you didn't think about the fact that in the last three weeks he'd lost seven of his science team members--and nearly died himself at the hands of a million microscopic robots. With that stuff taken into account, maybe the incredible thing was that he was functioning at all. 

"And then there's the whole problem of..." 

But, man, was he drunk! John Sheppard watched his teammate gesticulate pointedly as he railed against the inhumanity of, strangely enough, the lack of Jell-o in the Pegasus Galaxy, and wondered exactly what was going on in that great and overheated brain. 

It wasn't always easy, though Rodney telegraphed his feelings clearly enough sometimes--maybe it should be called emotional sign language. The more scared Rodney was, the more his hands moved. 

John wondered, vaguely, when the reality of the hell they had hanging over their heads would finally make Rodney's hands stop moving. He realized he hadn't finished a thought in ten minutes, and decided he'd had quite enough to drink, suddenly, and put down his Athosian-excuse-for-beer. 

"I mean, it's _dried goods_!" Rodney continued. "How much trouble would it have been to send through a case or two? I'd even take green Jell-o at this point, because really--" 

"It's just Jell-o, McKay," Ford pointed out--pretty mildly, John thought. 

McKay seemed to think otherwise. 

"Oh sure, it's just Jell-o," the scientist parroted. "And hockey. And _land_. And Big Boy's double cheeseburgers..." As Rodney's litany of loss continued to include yogurt and the Rose Bowl Parade, John was more than a little surprised to see tears forming in his friend's eyes. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Rodney cry before. "And the Final Four. And..." There it was, John thought with a weird sense of horrified wonder, an honest-to-God sniffle. "And Dumais. And Brendan... Sunday mornings in bed with the cat..." 

It was like a car wreck in front of him on the freeway. John couldn't look away. He just sat there, with Teyla and Ford and Carson and Zelenka, and watched while Rodney McKay just broke down. Completely. With sobs, even. 

"I miss my cat!" Rodney wailed, in a slightly girly voice that made John glad there was no one else in the commissary. McKay would never have lived this down if, God forbid, someone like that asshole Kavanaugh were around. As it was, the group of them--the unofficial Lead Team of Atlantis, sat with him and let him finally get _something_ out of his system. Was it everything? John seriously doubted it. Rodney was as deep as he was brilliant. He probably had traumas none of them would ever know about. 

But then, didn't they all? 

"Fermi is probably bored to tears," Rodney continued, his voice slurring even more markedly as tears of his own rolled down his face. "Sharon doesn't know anything about physics. What are they going to talk about!?" 

Okay, given that he was talking about conversations with his _cat_ , it might be time to call this evening to a close. 

"I'm sure he's okay, Rodney," John offered gently. He'd dealt with enough traumatized, off-his-ass-drunk soldiers to know the right voice. "I bet he's enjoying spending time with a beautiful woman." He managed to waggle his eyebrows lecherously, while his heart was more than a little heavy for his friend. 

Rodney's head cocked to the side, and the tears seemed to stop for a moment. "Well, there is that. You know, he always did like her--even if she hated _me_." Nope. There went the waterworks again. John hoped vainly that McKay was too drunk to remember this, come morning. "I want to go home," Rodney whined, in a voice that was totally unlike him. Unless this was what Rodney had sounded like as a four-year-old. "I want to go home and open up the door to my apartment and have Fermi waiting there for me." He sniffled loudly, and a tragically lost look came over his slack-jawed face. "I want _someone_ waiting for me." 

Carson, who'd known McKay the longest, seemed to come to the decision that it was time to put the poor guy to bed. He nodded to John, who came around the table and took one of Rodney's arms in his hands. Together, the two of them pulled him to his feet while the rest of the group silently moved out of the way. 

"Come now, Rodney," Carson soothed in a murmur. "Let's get you to bed, then." 

McKay was at least with it enough to notice he was being manhandled. "Wha? Where are we going?" 

"To bed, Rodney," John commented, just enough snark in his voice that, if Rodney did remember this, he wouldn't think John had been as worried as he was. "Didn't you listen to Carson?" 

That made a very strange pattern of McKay's features. "To bed?" he asked, as if trying to add a new variable to an already complex equation. "You... and Carson... are--" 

"Taking you back to your quarters so you can pass out in peace, Rodney," Carson put in. And again, there was snark--just in case. 

"Pass out." Another variable. Rodney shrugged, nearly upending himself in the process, in spite of the hands that held him up. "Yeah, okay. Just don't say that other word." 

John grinned as they passed through another blessedly empty corridor and arrived at Rodney's door without being seen. "When you drink too much, you don't faint, Rodney. You pass out." 

"Yeah." McKay looked at him curiously. "I didn't drink too much." 

"Of course you didn't," Carson agreed as John palmed open the door and they started maneuvering the drunken scientist into the room. He was heavier than he looked--and he looked pretty damn solid. By unspoken agreement, they just dropped him on the bed, fully clothed, and Carson straightened out his friend's arms and legs. 

Rodney was nearly asleep by the time they'd finished getting him settled, though he seemed to be trying to find the energy for another weepfest. 

"It doesn't help you know." Rodney whispered into the darkness. 

It was a statement out of the blue, and John wasn't even sure what was coming next. "What doesn't, McKay?" 

"Dying with friends." John could barely see Rodney's face, but he dimly saw pain there, before his friend turned his back on them, curling fetal on the mattress. "I thought it would be better--you know? Better than dying alone?" He let out an exhausted sigh. "It's not." 

Carson let out a sigh of his own for Rodney's pain. "But you're here, Rodney," he murmured. "Alive. With friends." 

Rodney curled in tighter, making John wonder if he was going to pull something. "They aren't." 

John wanted to say something--something profound about how watching his own teammates dying in Afghanistan had been a sort of testament to their sacrifice. About how he remembered them as heroes, the way Gaul and Dumais and all the rest were heroes--forging a new road for humanity... 

But anything he might have said died on his lips as he realized that Rodney had finally succumbed to his drinking and a light, pitifully tear-filled snoring filled the room. 

Without a word--because John and Carson both knew no one would speak of this again--Rodney McKay's friends let themselves out, and tried not to admit that they felt just like he did. 

* * * * * * *  
The End 

**Author's Note:**

> *There is a physics theory of the decay of neutrinos called the "beta decay theory", first posited by Enrico Fermi. Just FYI.


End file.
